Techmeme
December 10, 2020, 9:10 AM

Top News

Federal Trade Commission:
FTC, in coalition with 46 state AGs, plus Guam and DC, sues Facebook, alleging Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions were used to stifle competition  —  Agency challenges Facebook's multi-year course of unlawful conduct  —  The Federal Trade Commission today sued Facebook …
More: New York Times, Federal Trade Commission, AVC, NBC News, The Guardian, XDA Developers, CNBC, OneZero , Ars Technica, Financial Times, Washington Post, news.com.au, Wall Street Journal, BuzzFeed News, Protocol, Los Angeles Times, Axios, Cointelegraph, Slate, ABC News, Bloomberg, Tubefilter, MakeUseOf, Forrester, Washington Post, SiliconANGLE, Reclaim The Net, Platformer, The Register, and ZDNet
Jennifer Newstead / About Facebook:
Facebook responds to the FTC and state AGs, saying the lawsuits they've brought forth are “revisionist history” and their antitrust case is unprecedented  —  Billions of people use Facebook's products every day.  To earn their time and attention, we compete fiercely against many other services across the world.
NY State Attorney General:
New York AG Letitia James leads a coalition of 48 AGs in suing Facebook, alleging the company uses a “buy or bury” approach toward its competitors  —  AG James Leads Bipartisan Coalition of 48 Attorneys General Charging Anticompetitive Conduct  —  Facebook Thwarted Competition, Reduced Consumer Privacy for Profits
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Germany initiates antitrust probe against Facebook for tying Oculus use to possession of a Facebook account  —  Facebook's bad week just got worse: It's being investigated in Germany for linking usage of its VR product, Oculus, to having a Facebook account.
The Verge:
FTC's antitrust lawsuit against Facebook seeks to unwind Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions, force Facebook to seek approval for future acquisitions, and more  —  New York Attorney General Letitia James announced the lawsuit on Wednesday  —  On Wednesday, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced …
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Ina Fried / Axios:
Internal memo: Sundar Pichai apologizes over the handling of AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru's departure and says he will investigate  —  Google CEO Sundar Pichai apologized Wednesday for the company's handling of the departure of AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru and said he would investigate …
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Adobe has released its final scheduled Flash Player update for all regions outside of mainland China, says it will block Flash content from January 12  —  Adobe releases final Flash update with stronger language asking users to uninstall the app before its EOL.
Dan Primack / Axios:
Airbnb raises $3.5B in its IPO at $68 per share, up from a previous $56-$60 range, giving it a fully diluted valuation of $47.3B  —  Airbnb on Wednesday raised $3.5 billion in its IPO at a fully diluted valuation of around $47.3 billion, and will begin trading Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange under ticker symbol ABNB.
D. M. Moore / Polygon:
AT&T has agreed to sell Japanese anime streaming service Crunchyroll to Sony's Funimation Global Group for $1.18B  —  The move consolidates the anime industry in a major way  —  On Wednesday, Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. announced that AT&T and WarnerMedia agreed to sell Crunchyroll to Funimation.
Byron Tau / Wall Street Journal:
Apple and Google to ban mobile apps that use location trackers from data broker X-Mode, after it was revealed X-Mode provided data to US government contractors  —  After the data broker came under scrutiny for national-security work, tech giants tell app developers to remove trackers or lose access to their operating systems
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
French data protection agency CNIL fines Google $120M and Amazon $42M for placing tracking cookies without consent  —  France's data protection agency, the CNIL, has slapped Google and Amazon with fines for dropping tracking cookies without consent.  —  Google has been hit with a total …
Jessica Bursztynsky / CNBC:
DoorDash closes at $189.51, up 85% from its $102 pricing, after popping to $182 as the shares began trading, giving a valuation of $60.2B  —  - Shares of DoorDash, a leading food delivery app, started trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday.  — The stock began trading at $182 per share and closed at $189.51.
Washington Post:
National Weather Service says it has an Internet bandwidth problem and proposes limiting users to 60 connections/minute, which could hurt weather apps and sites  —  Agency floats a solution to problems that could hobble private companies and affect popular weather apps.
Kaitlyn Tiffany / The Atlantic:
Inside Ovarit, an invite-only Reddit-like site founded by members of the “trans-exclusionary radical feminists” subreddit r/GenderCritical that Reddit banned  —  Mary Kate Fain, a 27-year-old engineer and writer living in Houston, has always considered herself a feminist.

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Kellen Browning / New York Times:
YouTube Official Blog: